How We Do It, Part XL

I hate it when people ask me what Sophie knows. I don't know what Sophie knows. I'll say everything and I'll think nothing. I'll say nothing and think everything. A man once asked me whether she knew anyone, whether she could feel love. He popped peanuts into his mouth. He was nice, I heard, and now he's dead. A child therapist once asked what her abilities were, how much can she really contribute to the family? After I removed the hatchet from my chest, I cleaved her in two. So, I don't know. I've hissed at Sophie in the night when she doesn't sleep, when she's seized and is awake, agitated, her brain a seeming jumble, a jungle -- trees, a forest, dense and dark and obtuse. A ruin, her life and mine. These are jungle thoughts. I've hissed at her in the night, not nice, so not nice, and I know she knows me then. She knows me and I'll imagine she hates me. I reframe the not-knowing to punish myself. Where she leaves off and I begin or where I leave off and she begins. I am thrust backward to a motel room in La Jolla, the year of El Nino. The rain pelting down. The navys of the two rooms we shared, the electric stove, the overhead fan. The crib. How she never slept. She was so beautiful, her hair a cap of ringlets, her head tilted. She smiled and folded her legs, even then.